Nowadays there are known different devices and systems to support a reflective body or sheet, such as mirrors, mounted on heliostats used for harnessing solar energy.
In most cases, the supporting structure of the reflective body or sheet consists of a metallic frame or structure constituted by a plurality of metallic profiles of different sections which are joined together by welding or by removable elements such as screws and nuts to determine said frame, which usually has an essentially rectangular shape. Later, the reflective body is joined to the aforementioned frame usually by means of adhesives.
The aforementioned frames usually have a series of disadvantages among which we can mention the following ones:
Generally they are very heavy-weight structures due to the metallic nature of the profiles so that their mounting is difficult when the reflective surface to be installed is large. Said great weight also complicates and hardens the supporting structure of the facets and worsens its deformations vis-à-vis the heliostat service loads and thus its optical performance.
The union points, be them welding or screws, are usually prone to deteriorations by external meteorological agents such as rain and drastic temperature changes, which can cause the frame to break at said points.
Besides, as the profiles are joined together, there can be small displacements between them once the reflective body has been attached and said displacements can cause deformations on said bodies worsening their optical performance, and even leading to the partial loosening of said bodies from the frame itself.
It is also difficult to attain high repetitiveness in the dimensional quality in this type of welded or mechanically joined structures as a result of the deformations caused by the welding process or mechanical unions which results in a worse optical performance of the reflective surface they support.
Consequently, manufacturing and mounting costs are high for the manufacturing of large series of facets based on this concept as a result of their manufacturing and mounting process, conceptually manual and therefore hardly automatable.
Due to all of this, it has been detected a need to provide a supporting structure, particularly a flat facet which as far as possible attempts to solve the problems described.
This objective is attained by the invention as defined in claim 1, in the dependent claims preferred embodiments of the invention are defined.